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- All Subjects: Art criticism
- All Subjects: Female nude in art
- Genre: Masters Thesis
- Creators: Fahlman, Betsy
- Status: Published
Description
This thesis expands the scope of literature surrounding the work of Juno Calypso, Christina Quarles, and Lisa Yuskavage by increasing the scope of their theoretical interpretations. Juno Calypso’s case requires establishing a critical foundation for her interrogations of domestic space, her subversions of feminine performance—particularly through accusatory address of the gaze—and her demonstrations of the new-hysterical process that I argue for via her alter-ego, “Joyce.” Similarly, I emphasize Christina Quarles’ subversions of art historical traditions, such as the gaze, meta-framing, and figural language, instead of her explorations into race and linguistic titular play. Finally, Lisa Yuskavage’s inclusion will bring discussions of her contemporary artworks fully into the present, leaving behind the scandalous-or-not questions plaguing her oeuvre in favor of contemporary figural reinterpretation. Through comparisons of each one’s approach to contemporary, artistic feminist theories and dilemmas, the artists convey informative insights into today’s visual culture. The thesis brings these ruminations to light through study of Calypso’s, Quarles’, and Yuskavage’s shared themes and characteristics, including subconsciously-influenced practices, multiplicity, and uncanny space. I account for one of Calypso’s most crucial yet divergent strategies of spatial uncanniness—gendered space. Calypso, Quarles, and Yuskavage are also linked by their ostensibly domestic spaces and featuring feminized figures. Yuskavage uses hyperfeminine performance as means of questioning the conventional and the pleasure one expected to receive from it; Quarles instead uses ambiguity to challenge the traditional white femininity assigned to subjecthood in order to reinforce her dissolution of race and gender. Unanswered performance and gaze questions of femininity, feminine performance and feminine rituals drive Calypso’s photographs, in which an onlooker’s voyeurism is highlighted by their mid-procedure state. Yuskavage uses the home as extension of cheesy self, a site of performance, but Quarles uses domestic spaces as sites or causes of internal struggle. Calypso is closer aligned to Yuskavage’s intersectional-feminist anxieties than Quarles’ post-pandemic ones. The temporal span of the artworks’ creation (2015-2022) is reflective of the dramatic social paradigm shifts experienced by Western societies post-BLM and other social movements, and post-COVID pandemic; the arguments made by this essay will contribute to the understanding of ongoing change experienced by women.
ContributorsBugno, Celia (Author) / Fahlman, Betsy (Thesis advisor) / Anderson, Lisa (Committee member) / Hoy, Meredith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
In this thesis, I investigate the anatomical excesses represented in the works of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. In recent years, art historical scholarship on Ingres has multiplied after being quiescent for much of the twentieth century, as contemporary scholars perceive the unusual contradictions in his works. I introduce the concepts of pathological versus imaginary distortions. Pathological distortions are distortions that represent diseased bodies, such as the goiters in many of Ingres's female figures, whereas imaginary distortions are not anatomically possible, such as the five extra vertebrae in the Grande Odalisque. Ingres employed both of these types of these distortions in his bodies, and I discuss how these two types of distortions can be read differently.
My thesis is that Ingres employed extended anatomical variations-in his paintings, most notably in his female figures, for several reasons: to reconcile his anxiety about originality while remaining within the tradition of Classicism and "disegno," to pay homage to his predecessors who were also the masters of line, and to highlight his command of line and drawing. Though Ingres has never been a strictly Neoclassical artist in the Davidian tradition, the Romantic elements of his work are underlined further by these anatomical variations.
My thesis is that Ingres employed extended anatomical variations-in his paintings, most notably in his female figures, for several reasons: to reconcile his anxiety about originality while remaining within the tradition of Classicism and "disegno," to pay homage to his predecessors who were also the masters of line, and to highlight his command of line and drawing. Though Ingres has never been a strictly Neoclassical artist in the Davidian tradition, the Romantic elements of his work are underlined further by these anatomical variations.
ContributorsEpstein, Danya (Author) / Codell, Julie F. (Thesis advisor) / Gully, Anthony (Committee member) / Fahlman, Betsy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Many contemporary artists have turned to the past in order to negotiate and make sense of their relationship with the present. Similarly, museums have begun to look back in order to push forward and through a revisionist lens they scrutinize their collections and reveal ignored object histories. A prominent method some museums implement is allowing contemporary artists to comb through the vaults and present new relationships between their objects to their visitors. Through a psychological analysis of memory, and theorists’ dissection of nostalgia, object agency, and contemporaneity, I argue that artists Spencer Finch, Do Ho Suh, Newsha Tavakolian, Solmaz Daryani, Malekeh Nayiny, Mitra Tabrizian, Mark Dion, Fred Wilson, and Gala Porras-Kim function as revivalists – or artists whose works use memory and nostalgia to bring the past back to life. By attempting to retrieve memories, create nostalgic experiences, and question histories, they make their works tools for remembrance, reconciliation, and renegotiation with the past and present. The concerns these artists bring to the surface through their works build an understanding of how memory and nostalgia function as devices for personal meaning-making, trauma processing, and human-object relationship building.
ContributorsZiesmann, Hannah Grace (Author) / Fahlman, Betsy (Thesis advisor) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Lineberry, Heather (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020